A high-wire act for Fitzgerald
Can Chicago's top cop balance D.C. role?

By Steven R. Strahler

In the midst of aggressively pursuing corruption at the state and local level in Chicago, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald is facing an immense challenge in his apparently unprecedented dual role as special prosecutor in the White House leak investigation.

In Chicago, his workload includes the prosecution of former Illinois Gov. George Ryan and an investigation of corruption at City Hall. In Washington, he's investigating the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity to the press, a probe that appears headed toward presidential adviser Karl Rove...

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Here in the blue state, we may be watching the final coughs of the Chicago Machine:

With two head-turning complaints filed in federal court Monday, U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald has moved the issue of patronage hiring into the criminal realm, a bold step that has raised the stakes in City Hall--and, if Fitzgerald is successful, possibly around the country.

The criminal complaints against city officials Robert Sorich and Patrick Slattery allege that they participated in a scheme to defraud the city of money, property and "the intangible right to the honest services" of the defendants as public employees.

That "honest services" approach to fraud has been used to prosecute other high-profile corruption cases, from the conviction of former Cicero Mayor Betty Loren-Maltese to the Cook County judges caught up in the Greylord scandal of the 1980s.

Though those cases involve bribery and other clearly criminal activities, patronage hiring has been more of a gray area, and some legal experts feel Fitzgerald is taking a highly aggressive approach.

For decades, the battle against patronage political hiring has taken place in civil courtrooms, resulting in consent orders such as the Shakman decree for the city of Chicago and the U.S. Supreme Court ruling known as Rutan for the state of Illinois.

The first counteroffensive from Daley loyalists Monday was to argue that it remains a matter for civil litigation, not criminal. Daley repeated that theme Tuesday.

"It's important to note that for more than 30 years, through six administrations, such [Shakman] violations have all been treated as civil, not criminal, matters--at least until now," Daley said.

A civil lawsuit filed against the city resulted in the Shakman decree of 1983, which banned political hiring for all but about 1,000 mostly managerial positions in the city's workforce of roughly 38,000. In the Rutan case, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the state government could not hire based on political affiliation for non-policymaking jobs.

Since 1983, challenges to city political hiring have largely been treated as actions to enforce the Shakman decree.

But complaints filed Monday detail criminal allegations against Sorich, a senior official with the Mayor's Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, and Slattery, director of staff services in the Department of Streets and Sanitation.

Prosecutors said that job interview scores were manipulated to benefit prechosen "winners." They also allege city officials falsified test scores to promote favored candidates and that supervisors considered interviewing others as "going through the motions."

Each defendant faces one count of mail fraud, though prosecutors could seek an indictment with additional charges.

Legal and political experts said Tuesday that they didn't know of any other cases in which the fraud statute was used to attack patronage hiring.

While most did not want to prejudge the Sorich and Slattery cases, several said that a successful prosecution could trigger a sea change in how governments hire workers.

`An aggressive theory'

"It's an aggressive theory," said Ronald Safer, former federal prosecutor in private practice in Chicago. "I think it will have a very, very broad impact. If mail fraud is read that broadly, it will have an impact not only on how people govern, but on whether people will be willing to govern."

Safer said he expected the case eventually to be resolved by federal appeals courts....

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